The Government Doesn’t Work For YouAnd it's not "supposed to," either.

A typical response to the latest exposure of politicians and bureaucrats who waste money, engage in cronyism, fail to respond to the complaints of citizens, or get caught in a scandal only to escape repercussions is to say “We need to remind them who they work for!” But this sentiment belies a basic misunderstanding about the nature of government.

Governments are organizations of people who have the supposedly legitimate authority to use initiatory violence within a given geographic area. They plunder the inhabitants of that area and seek to control the activities of those inhabitants to the greatest extent possible. Government officials do not particularly care to provide any service to those citizens whom they plunder, nor could they even if they wanted to, due to their inability to rationally allocate resources to that end.1 Even if starry-eyed rookie government employees have visions of serving the public, those dreams will be drowned in oceans of red ink, suffocated by nonsensical regulations, and disincentivized by bureaucratic systems which reward sloth over industriousness. Governments are supposed to plunder, enslave, and kill. They aren’t supposed to help or protect. The land they control is not “ours,” and the government is not “us.” To the extent that governments provide any services at all, it’s for one of two reasons.

Providing Intellectual Cover for Extortion

If the governments of the world simply stole money and resources from their subjects and ordered them around, they’d have revolutions on their hands in very short order. Providing a modicum of various services such as education, common defense, policing, and of course the roads gives cover to the theft and fools some people into thinking the government is a kind of pre-paid service agency. As Murray Rothbard wrote in Anatomy of the State:

The State is almost universally considered an institution of social service. Some theorists venerate the State as the apotheosis of society; others regard it as an amiable, though often inefficient, organization for achieving social ends; but almost all regard it as a necessary means for achieving the goals of mankind, a means to be ranged against the “private sector” and often winning in this competition of resources.

The “services” governments do provide almost always have a concomitant purpose for the government itself. Few remember, for example, that the Interstate Highway System was not simply largesse from the federal government, but a system designed to facilitate efficient movement of military forces within the United States.2

To Protect Their Tax Base From Competing Governments

Governments want to keep fleecing their tax base, and being overthrown by other governments is contraindicated to that objective. Governments spend a great deal of money on militaries, not to protect their subjects from any and all harm, but to protect themselves from being overthrown, and their tax cattle from harm. Dead subjects don’t produce taxable value from their labor, and as such, governments have a vested interest in keeping their productive members alive and working. Even if a government isn’t overthrown, members of a tax base can still vote with their feet and move to another area where the burden of taxation and regulation is not so onerous, so governments have an interest in striking a balance whereby they reap their desired tax revenue, but they do not impose such draconian expropriation that they actually reduce their income.

The Government Isn’t Your Employee

Make sure you remind this guy who he works for.

As noted by comedian Dave Smith, a mugger who steals your wallet doesn’t become your employee.3 Similarly, the government doesn’t work for you because they steal from you. That’s not how it’s “supposed to work,” either. They steal from you, order you around, and imprison or kill you if you disobey. They don’t work for you. Most frustration among those attempting to understand government actions stems from this misunderstanding. People like to analyze government as if it were a grocery store that had nonsensical, counterproductive policies like ordering great quantities of food only to burn it all in a pit behind the store, and punching customers in the face. If you think the government is “supposed” to help you, protect you, or provide services to you, then yes, its policies will seem nonsensical. “Why do they enact X law when it actually makes things worse?” is a common refrain from people struggling to make sense of government actions. But if you understand that government is a gang of thieves writ large,4 lusting for money and obsessed with power, their policies aren’t actually so nonsensical any more. They enact gun control laws, for example, because it helps them control their subjects. To use carefully reasoned arguments about safety means you aren’t even playing the same game as they are.

The government isn’t like an irrational madman who thinks the moon is made of cheese. The government is more like a sociopath who takes rational steps toward immoral ends. If you understand this, you know that appealing to the morality of government is a waste of time, and pointing out the harm caused by their actions is also a lost cause.

One comment

Excellent writing and rhetoric!!!! In I Samuel 8, the ancient Israelites wanted an earthly king; God tried to convince them to accept Him as their King. In verses 11-18 the Prophet Samuel explained to the people that the king will make them work for him. He uses the phrase “he will take” six times. But, to no avail. The people wanted to be like the countries around them. Jehovah God is the inventor, creator and initiator of freedom. He does not force His will on us.

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